Before the voyage of the Mary Turner came to an end, Dag Daughtry, sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, with a great laugh rechristened the schooner2 “the Ship of Fools.” But that was some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled his duties that not even Captain Doane could conjure3 a shadow of complaint.
Especially did the steward4 attend upon the Ancient Mariner5, for whom he had come to conceive a strong admiration6, if not affection. The old fellow was different from his cabin-mates. They were money-lovers; everything in them had narrowed down to the pursuit of dollars. Daughtry, himself moulded on generously careless lines, could not but appreciate the spaciousness7 of the Ancient Mariner, who had evidently lived spaciously8 and who was ever for sharing the treasure they sought.
“You’ll get your whack9, steward, if it comes out of my share,” he frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the latter’s part. “There’s oodles of it, and oodles of it, and, without kith or kin10, I have so little time longer to live that I shall not need it much or much of it.”
And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, from the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent11 of treasure pungent12 in his nostrils13, with a duplicate key stole the ship’s daily position from Captain Doane’s locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, who kept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered warning to the others of the risk they ran from continual contact with the carrier of the terrible disease.
Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter. He knew the thing as a thing that occasionally happened to human creatures. It bothered him, from the pain standpoint, scarcely at all, and it never entered his kinky head that his master did not know about it. For the same reason he never suspected why Ah Moy kept him so at a distance. Nor had Kwaque other worries. His god, over all gods of sea and jungle, he worshipped, and, himself ever intimately allowed in the presence, paradise was wherever he and his god, the steward, might be.
And so Michael. Much in the same way that Kwaque loved and worshipped did he love and worship the six-quart man. To Michael and Kwaque, the daily, even hourly, recognition and consideration of Dag Daughtry was tantamount to resting continuously in the bosom14 of Abraham. The god of Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimshaw was a graven god whose name was Gold. The god of Kwaque and Michael was a living god, whose voice could be always heard, whose arms could be always warm, the pulse of whose heart could be always felt throbbing16 in a myriad17 acts and touches.
No greater joy was Michael’s than to sit by the hour with Steward and sing with him all songs and tunes18 he sang or hummed. With a quantity or pitch even more of genius or unusualness in him than in Jerry, Michael learned more quickly, and since the way of his education was singing, he came to sing far beyond the best Villa19 Kennan ever taught Jerry.
Michael could howl, or sing, rather (because his howling was so mellow20 and so controlled), any air that was not beyond his register that Steward elected to sing with him. In addition, he could sing by himself, and unmistakably, such simple airs as “Home, Sweet Home,” “God save the King,” and “The Sweet By and By.” Even alone, prompted by Steward a score of feet away from him, could he lift up his muzzle21 and sing “Shenandoah” and “Roll me down to Rio.”
Kwaque, on stolen occasions when Steward was not around, would get out his Jews’ harp22 and by the sheer compellingness of the primitive23 instrument make Michael sing with him the barbaric and devil-devil rhythms of King William Island. Another master of song, but one in whom Michael delighted, came to rule over him. This master’s name was Cocky. He so introduced himself to Michael at their first meeting.
“Cocky,” he said bravely, without a quiver of fear or flight, when Michael had charged upon him at sight to destroy him. And the human voice, the voice of a god, issuing from the throat of the tiny, snow-white bird, had made Michael go back on his haunches, while, with eyes and nostrils, he quested the steerage for the human who had spoken. And there was no human . . . only a small cockatoo that twisted his head impudently24 and sidewise at him and repeated, “Cocky.”
The taboo25 of the chicken Michael had been well taught in his earliest days at Meringe. Chickens, esteemed26 by Mister Haggin and his white-god fellows, were things that dogs must even defend instead of ever attack. But this thing, itself no chicken, with the seeming of a wild feathered thing of the jungle that was fair game for any dog, talked to him with the voice of a god.
“Get off your foot,” it commanded so peremptorily27, so humanly, as again to startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage for the god-throat that had uttered it.
“Get off your foot, or I’ll throw the leg of Moses at you,” was the next command from the tiny feathered thing.
After that came a farrago of Chinese, so like the voice of Ah Moy, that again, though for the last time, Michael sought about the steerage for the utterer.
At this Cocky burst into such wild and fantastic shrieks28 of laughter that Michael, ears pricked29, head cocked to one side, identified in the fibres of the laughter the fibres of the various voices he had just previously30 heard.
And Cocky, only a few ounces in weight, less than half a pound, a tiny framework of fragile bone covered with a handful of feathers and incasing a heart that was as big in pluck as any heart on the Mary Turner, became almost immediately Michael’s friend and comrade, as well as ruler. Minute morsel31 of daring and courage that Cocky was, he commanded Michael’s respect from the first. And Michael, who with a single careless paw-stroke could have broken Cocky’s slender neck and put out for ever the brave brightness of Cocky’s eyes, was careful of him from the first. And he permitted him a myriad liberties that he would never have permitted Kwaque.
Ingrained in Michael’s heredity, from the very beginning of four-legged dogs on earth, was the defence of the meat. He never reasoned it. Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating and air-breathing, was his defence of his meat once he had his paw on it, his teeth in it. Only to Steward, by an extreme effort of will and control, could he accord the right to touch his meat once he had himself touched it. Even Kwaque, who most usually fed him under Steward&r............